Drinking in Pregnancy

[mommax3]

Well, I have quite enjoyed this thread! I don't have strong feelings about it, because I am not much of a drinker. Now stress eating......I know LOTS about that one! Actually, way back when I had a 3 year old and a baby, I had a neighbor with kids that were roughly the same age. We would get together once a week with the kids at one of our houses for morning playtime and lunch. Our big "mommy treat" was that we would drink caffeine free (but not diet!) Coke with our lunch. Let me tell you, the sugar rush of that first drink HAD to be akin to a hit from a crack pipe. We used to joke about it.

DH blames our *extremely* active (crawled at 5 months) oldest child on the fact that I drank (caffienated) Coke fairly regularly throughout my pregnancy. I blame the fact that the child was fathered by DH. :> I know for a fact that DH would not have been on board with alcohol consumption during pregnancy, but it was never really an issue here.

Sally

[Phoebe]

I think for every research study you can find to prove something, you can find one with the opposite outcome. You can manipulate statistics to say many things. It would be hard to prove how much alcohol really hurts a fetus or outcomes after birth. Self report isn't the most accurate form of data. How do you know that women who confess to consuming lots of alchohol wouldn't be more likely to expose their unborn child to second hand smoke or other pollutants that can cause harm. I think the whole thing is difficult to isolate in research.

One of DH's attendings during fellowship said the mom would have to consume cases of beer a day to harm the fetus. I have no idea where she got this information and even if it was documented. I wouldn't want to risk it.

Personally, I am a sipper like Nellie (only after the first trimester). I would steal an occassional sip of DH's beer. A fellow from DH's program drank a Guiness almost daily after the first trimester and during nursing. She said it was great for the breastmilk production and her three healthy daughters always slept well.

[DCJenn]

Oh I totally forgot about the stout beer thing- BOTH my SIL's OB and our friend whose wife is Thai talked about the stout beer for milk production. My SIL was told to start AFTER she gave birth but our Thai friend had one a day for her entire pregnancy.

Jenn

(stout is a very low alcohol beer, FYI- there's no correlation between color and alcohol content.)

[Vishenka69]

I think the biggest problem for me would not necessarily be alcohol alone but the fact that most of diet consists of stuff that pregnant women should avoid. I have no idea what I'm going to do once I get pregnant. I really hope my cravings will lead me to something safe.

Oh I totally forgot about the stout beer thing- BOTH my SIL's OB and our friend whose wife is Thai talked about the stout beer for milk production. My SIL was told to start AFTER she gave birth but our Thai friend had one a day for her entire pregnancy.

Jenn

I'd never heard about drinking it during pregnancy to help milk production, but have heard much about it after pregnancy.

My pediatrician told my mom to drink wine while nursing me if I was fussy. I was so desperate w/Quinn that I tried it - and it didn't work. My ped told me that the amount of alcohol in wine and then the amount that makes it into the breast milk really won't do anything.

I think it's supposed to be the hopps in the beer that helps bring the milk in.

Stout is also good for anaemia, guiness is often given once a day in some hospitals like spinal rehab hospitals to build up iron, not advised in pregnancy anymore but in the 70's and 80's it was.

[PrincessFiona]

let's keep it tame ladies and germs

[PrincessFiona]

Locking. We're all entitled to our opinions...just because we don't like them doesn't mean they can't be expressed...from both sides here. [/url]